Posted on 05/05/2011 10:01:32 PM PDT by OldDeckHand
While it took a little while for the Republican candidates attending tonight’s debate to get going, the sheer diversity on the panel guaranteed some spirited answers, paramount among them Rep. Ron Paul’s steadfast adherence to civil liberties, which somehow concluded with him supporting legalization of heroin to raucous applause– highlighting the thick tension between conservatives and libertarians on the GOP.
During a “lightning round” where candidates were asked to answer questions about the issues that would give them the most problems during the primaries, both libertarian candidates– Paul and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson– were asked to defend their liberal stances on drugs. First was Rep. Paul, who Fox’s Chris Wallace confronted with his controversial position that drugs and prostitution should be legalized. His unapologetic response elicited cheers from the crowd, as he argues that, just as “you don’t have the First Amendment so you could talk about the weather,” civil liberties do not exist to protect personal rights upon which most agree. He later likened private freedoms like this to religious freedoms, prompting Wallace’s follow-up: “Are you suggesting that heroin and prostitution are an exercise of liberty?”
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
Cheers!
Ron Paul groupies *and* jazz musicians. /sarc>
Cheers!
Government-issues chastity belts for all?
I do a good enough job of keeping it in my pants by myself, thank you very much.
Sell Congress into slavery to pay for the national debt;they're the ones who incurred it.
How about nuclear weapons? Anthrax, can I have me some anthrax? Mustard gas - what about mustard gas?
How about military aircraft?
As for drugs, they're a source of revenue.
Cheers!
That's good for you; but what of the teen pregnancy rate and sexually transmitted diseases (e.g. chlamydia)?
Did you notice the part where I talked of "meaningful social stigma"...which is manifestly NOT the same as "government coercion"?
The law, like polling, can act as both a barometer of social feeling, as well as an implicit guide to it.
The liberals like to write laws to "push the envelope" as they call it, otherwise the sheeple will not move in the desired direction; thereby feeding the liberals' pernicious auto-fellatory Prometheus complex. They do this by passing "feel-good" laws to remove the hand of government from certain social mores, thereby giving an implicit "seal of approval" to that behaviour; or by forcing the issue through sheer defiance, and raising the political stakes to the point that the law is rendered hollow. (Kids heard of oral sex through Clinton. Now blow jobs among 13- and 14- year old girls are common.)
But once the social barriers are down, and the libs have allowed one more set of license to THEIR favorite vice, so they don't have to feel guilty over one particular sin anymore, all kinds of other evils and unintended consequences spring up as well, creating a myriad of NEW social problems, for which the inevitable solution is...you guessed it, more liberal power and control -- in theory, equally applicable to the entire population, but in practice, only used to harass and destroy conservatives and any others who oppose liberals (except, currently, for Islamists). You know, like all the sexual harassment laws which somehow never apply to Democrats; or Islamists.
Kinda funny how that works out.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. -- John Adams.
Cheers!
So considering the Adams quote, would getting the federal government back to 1789 standards be today’s equivalent of allowing 14 year old girls to engage in oral intercourse?
I don't see that the two are connected at all. Please fill in the intermediate steps in your reasoning.
Cheers!
The US Constitution with the Bill of Rights was the whole of government running operations when it was signed into law.
My question was, would going back to such a bare-bones government be de facto approval for 14 year old girls to do whatever they want sexually?
I thought parents teaching abstinence prevented stuff like that 98 times out of 100...
I've never seen such obvious set-up questions.
The overt pushing of condoms in schools, the sex "education" to include fisting, the schools czar Jennings and his reaction to word of a teenager having sexual contact with an adult...all of these help to undermine traditional morality.
The government withdrawing unilaterally would leave a vacuum of sorts; but one which has already been filled with a LOT of bad influences.
And the immorality develops and spreads over time, it does not stand automatically.
In order for that to work, there would have to be a sort of "affirmative action" towards traditional morality on the part of the government in order to ever have a shot at status quo ante.
Read the Mayflower compact: sodomy was punishable by death.
Clinton would never even have *TRIED* it: the development of the national consensus towards immorality (porn for sale in public? Telephone sex lines? Sex blogs from Ivy League Universities? All UNHEARD OF as recently as the 1960s.
As for the bare bones government...
Have you considered the possibility that the Feral Federal government isn't the only government -- that it also exists at the state and local levels?
And that there used to be much stronger morality laws in place at the state and local levels?
Cheers!
Cheers!
You have Liberals to blame for demoralizing society. Then again, different people have different sets of “morals,” so there’s that as well which may impede on Judeo-Christian values.
Also, last I heard, the 1789 Constitution and Bill of Rights didn’t include for a federal Board of Education. If NY and CA want to include modern “sex education” in schools, why can’t they? The ever-popular “it’s a free country” saying comes to mind.
The number of states that would enact laws preventing modern “sex education” to be taught in schools would far outweigh those that would teach it, making it easier to move to a state better suited for Judeo-Christian values.
I’m not making set-up questions. It’s a matter of liberty. The liberty to live as one sees fit: if parents want their teenage daughters to learn how to put a condom on a banana when in school, why can’t they? Let them live in NY or CA, while you would live in far-more-Conservative Texas or Arizona, where it is expressly banned in classrooms.
Like what I said earlier on the thread, if someone’s life consists of getting high daily, let them; as long as they don’t attempt to rob someone for cash, what right do you have to tell them how to live in their own home (if they have one?)?
I don’t have sex with strangers, nor do I do drugs, and that doesn’t mean a Liberal should or can tell me how having meaningless sex and doing drugs will extraordinarily improve my life.
I thought we were all for less government. The federal government saying what can and cannot be taught in schools is more government.
...I guess you haven't realized that you gave the game away when you took government schools for granted, and forgot to subject *them* to the "limited government" crusade which you want to apply (selectively) to morality.
There WERE no "government schools" with compulsory attendance provided for in the Constitution.
Cheers!
There’s a FReeper on here whose tagline reads “government should be so small you can drown it in a bathtub.” There’s a reason the 10th Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. The federal government is Constitutionally limited to be quite small, while the 10th Amendment leaves the possibility to be quite large, without individual state governments coming into play yet.
CA has legalized marijuana to a certain extent, under the guise of “medical marijuana.” Arizona enacted and is enforcing a law that is basically the same as a federal law, in the section of border enforcement. Does that make Arizona out of bounds to copy and enforce a law that the federal government will not?
My general point is that the scope of the federal government is EXTREMELY small, but the roles it is assigned are quite important.
While you don’t want government morality enforced on you and your family, it wouldn’t be fair for you to dictate to people what is and is not moral. It’s exactly what government has done for a long time: enforcing their version of morality on an entire country. Whereas if you held the reigns of government power, it wouldn’t be fair for you to dictate what is and is not right.
Getting to the second thing you said, no, there was no compulsory attendance for public schools, until the government made it so.
I’m a product of one of the worst public education systems in the country, but I’ll tell you that it is extremely hard to put me in a hole.
The problem in brief is that during the days of the Founding Fathers, no one DREAMED that there would be a unified attempt to *subvert* the government from within, by undermining the common morality.
Still less by hijacking the erstwhile machinery of government to do it.
The Constitution was written in a time and place where it was pretty much assumed that there would always be Judeo-Christian morality as the majority consensus -- not a plurality, still less a minority, never at all a frightened, whimpering majority held at bay by a foe occupying the major sociological choke points and abusing the just powers, hiding within the machinery of government like a virus commandeering the nucleus of a cell.
The libertarian argument can be summed up as "you can't legislate morality" -- as though one can stop at being "neutral".
Piss Christ and the banning of the Ten Commandments should be the historical proof that the behaviour prediected by such a model doesn't match the real-world, empirical results.
But if one doesn't accept that, and wants verbal sparring, then the only response is:
"Maybe not, but it sure beats the hell out of legislating immorality."
Cheers! But
There are laws against running a red light, jaywalking, and littering, but because the threat of being cited for any of those is relatively low, people continue to do those things. The obvious response is to increase policing, and that leads to increased citing for infractions.
Taking that to the next larger step, morality, will require such intimate policing that many will openly reject it - that will then cause political sides to reverse, with Republicans becoming those for increasing government, and Democrats for decreasing government. You don’t want this road to even be opened.
Reducing governments to their bare bones I think will please a sufficient number from both sides as to make it non-politically threatening for those wanting to pursue it.
Throwing more laws at already bad laws will not fix things. It’s like throwing gun control at crime in the hopes that criminals will follow the law and turn in their guns. It just doesn’t work that way.
You're missing one little thing 'bout the Adams quote.
If you have a virtuous people, they will reflect their virtue by passing laws to uphold that virtue: but if they are corrupt, the laws alone won't save them.
The real answer is the voluntary restoration of Christianity from the ground up.
Over the hand-wringing of the atheists, Communists, homosexuals, man-hating feminists, and libertines which have been carefully nurtured in our secular schools for so many years.
One can only imagine how different the world would have been if we had nuked Stalin in '46 when we had the chance...
Cheers!
I’ll be devil’s advocate by saying that we’re corrupt in the eyes of Democrats, always trying to tell them the way to live and imposing our abstinence on them.
It’s a circular argument that can never be won by either side, or a third party, or anyone else that tries. The only way to make as many happy as possible is to let states have free reign as to the will of their citizens. If NY and CA want gay marriage, let them. If citizens in TX want to be able to duel someone, if both are competent, agreeing parties, then let them as long as they’re in the open and are not able to harm bystanders.
Scratch a Nanny Stater, and you find idiots willing to parrot the "mission creep" via judicial activism. Just like this.
I was right. Again. I can spot you people from a mile away.
What I'm advocating is the application of clearly stated constitutional principles. Just because you don't like those principles, doesn't mean I'm wrong or a Socialist.
Apparently not since you still can't tell the difference between enumerated and limited powers versus an unlimited government via penumbras and emanations.
We're done here.
"Bigger Government" RINO's are easy to spot though. :-)
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